June 15, 2015

What's The Value Of Creativity?

According to reports in the press, at least $25 billion in media spending has gone into review so far this year.

This is a staggeringly large number.

This seems to me to be quantitative evidence of the continued imprudent emphasis that advertisers are putting on the delivery system (media) at the expense of the product (the ads.)

How much added value are you going to get by changing media agencies? Is one agency going to buy your media 3% more efficiently? Is one agency going to charge you 4% less? Is one agency's media strategy going to be 5% more effective?

I understand that when you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars, a few percent in savings can be significant.

Meanwhile, great creative work can be 100% more effective at selling than mediocre creative work. Or 500%.

Why are we so obsessed with the delivery systems when they offer so little leverage, and so complacent with mediocrity in the product when it offers such a large upside?

The behemoths of the corporatized, consolidated advertising industry have convinced the behemoths of the corporatized, consolidated marketing industry that efficiency is more important than imagination.

This is a dreadful development in the evolution of the advertising business.

It has been creeping up on us for years. But now we have the numbers that leave no doubt about what's going on.

ironically, we worship efficiency to the extent that it now has an ability to slide passed critical analysis. Who's going to argue against efficiency.........even if it's just illusory efficiency? So if your business revolves around measuring efficiency and prescribing more efficiency, then you can laugh all the way to the bank. Creativity be damned, I guess......

Another symptom of this dreadful development is the structure of mid- to small-sized agencies in flyover markets.

With the industry shift towards digital, art directors now seem to outnumber copywriters by about 8:1 at these shops. Which, in my opinion, has naturally resulted in crappier, less effective ads. Shinier, with better shapes and colors perhaps, but much weaker on messaging.

Is it any surprise that people who have forgotten how to sell have forgotten what they're selling? And why would any young, creative individual - especially a writer - get into the world of advertising when clients are rewriting copy and account people are letting it happen? We're doing fuck all to keep creative people employed, preferring the ass-in-chair approach. Quality? Not a metric, apparently.

I've seen different campaigns for the same brand vary hugely in effectiveness - Bob's numbers are not exaggerated (and in some cases poor work actively damages sales).

I think clients prefer to focus on media investment "efficiencies" because it's easier to put hard numbers on it, and because it feels somehow more businesslike and grown-up than talking about crative executions.

They are also uncomfortable with the idea that creativity can make differences of this magnitude. This contradicts with a worldview that provided the "messaging" is correct - and exceeds "action standards" in silly pretesting research - then the creative component is irrelevant to the outcome. A more nuanced approach would view them as inseperable. Indeed in many cases it is the messaging that was irrelevant to the success of stunningly effective work. Did the PG Tips tea campaign in the UK take the brand to category leadership for decades because of the "it's the taste" line? Was Heineken perceived as a more refreshing beer? Did Guinness' lauded 'surfer' ad succeed because it reflected the banal fact that you have to wait for the head on a pint of the same beer to settle? All questions which the marketing industry would rather not confront, hence the retreat into cosy but ultimately irrelevant "metrics" recording cost per impact, ratecard discounts etc

I have stopped counting the media briefs I have received where my first thought was that they needed to fix the creative. You can have all the amplification in the world, multiple of zero still give you zeros.

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."